Meersens | Organic products, EU origin and non EU, what you must know !

To eat seasonal organic while favoring poorly packaged products, good for the environment and ensuring their origin, can sometimes turn out to be the obstacle course, so how to find your way in all of this ? Zoom on the EU origin and non EU.

We must first make a major difference between organic, raw material’s origin and the country of the transformation of the product. A product can be biological and raw materials can have traveled thousands of kilometers to find themselves in your plates after being transformed/conditioned in a given country. This culture mode doesn’t certify the origin of raw materials nor the absence of migration of chemical compounds from packaging.

Reading time: 6 minutes

What is an organic product ?

How to know where these products come from ? EU origin or non EU, quésaco ?

What is an organic product ?

An organic product is :

Less pesticides, fertilizers and no GMOs
Animals raised without antibiotics and hormones and in less confined spaces
Ultra-transformed products free from a majority of additives, sweeteners, and artificial aromas

An organic product is not always :

Healthy/balanced food
Food totally free from pesticides
Food whose packaging are not likely to induce contaminations
Local food
Food that remunerates at a fair price the producers
More ecological food

To eat biological is good but you have to chose well your products to not find yourself with tomatoes in deep winter which have grown under heated greenhouses in a far away country !

How to know where your products come from ? EU origin and non EU, quésaco ?

The regulations impose to indicate the origin of fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey, wine, fish as well as meat and milk but for the other products, industrialists can remain more vague.

The regulation about the obligation to mention the origin integrates also processed products that contain at least 8% of meat or dairy products.

However some take advantage of the vagueness of appellations authorized by law in order to not inform correctly the costumer about the origin of the products.

Good students will indicate on the packaging the exact country/ies of the origin of the product (for example : origin France).
The less applied students are satisfied with an EU origin or not EU. In one case they inform us that the raw materials come from countries that belong to the European Union, in the other, they come from countries that do not belong to the European Union (with possibility of mix between raw materials coming from different countries).
Bad students mislead by indicating EU origin or not EU which means a product that could come from anywhere around the world which ends up indicating nothing at all !!!

In general, the more blurred the industrial on the origin of their products, the more doubt about the fact that they come from far away and that they come from various and varied mixtures.

Be also careful with brand names where we also distinguish good and less good students

Reflections of France” (Carrefour), “Our region have talent” (Leclerc), ” Flavors of our region” (Lidl) and “flavor route” (Intermarché) make efforts and follow rigorous specifications.

Organic product unfortunately aren’t always to be classified in as the best students since we find the mention of the place of the product’s fabrication but not the explicite origin of the ingredients !

Currently when the origin isn’t explicitly displayed and it is not possible to determine it, it is therefore best to favor products or brands that are transparent on that point. About organic products, it is better to buy them by season and locally.

Meersens application can help you, it allows you to decrypt your food and therefore to obtain an important clue, the one about ultra-transformation !

Sources:

https://www.economie.gouv.fr/particuliers/reglementation-origine-geographique-produits-alimentaires
https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2016/02/08/origine-viande-produits-marques-jouent-pas-le-jeu_n_9185202.html
https://reporterre.net/Le-faux-miel-envahit-les-rayons-des-supermarches

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